Sweden was an outlier because it didn’t implement harsh COVID restrictions. With rare exception, schools were not closed down, masks were not mandated, and voluntary mask use remained below 15% to 20% of the population.
In addition, vaccines are not mandatory there:
Another nice thing about Sweden is that they have a “don’t ask/don’t tell” medical privacy provision — where patient information, such as your COVID vaccine status, can never be disclosed by any of the healthcare staff you encounter.
This is similar to the legal confidentiality that you have with your lawyer (attorney-client confidentiality) and is rooted in a respect for the individual rights of human beings.
Though the median age in Sweden is higher than in the USA, Sweden handled COVID so much better than the USA that their excess deaths were lower. OurWorldInData shows that, up to 3 Jul 2022, the excess death per million in the USA was 3321.97 — but only 1038.89 in Sweden (a difference of 2283.08).
Because the US population is now up to 333.137 million, the death difference between Sweden and the USA is equivalent to (333.137*2283.08=) 760,578 US deaths. The accumulated excess death in the USA is 1.1 million, but if the USA had Sweden’s mortality throughout COVID, it’d only be 346,093:
Notice how, after May 2020, for 26 straight months, there was never even a single week when Sweden had as much excess death as in the USA.
Because Sweden has an older population than the USA, the most logical reason that death is higher in the USA is because of the strict measures implemented by US government officials.
Lockdowns and masks may turn out to be responsible for almost a third of the excess death, but vaccines are likely to be responsible for the lion’s share of unexpected deaths which have taken place in the last few years.
The death difference at left in the graph is likely due to lockdowns and masks being mandated in the USA, causing premature death here. The death difference at right is likely due to COVID vaccination in the US, also mandated in certain populations.
Because of no harsh or strict intervention there, the excess death in Sweden is a good estimate of the amount of excess death caused by COVID — the excess death which it was capable of causing, all by itself.
The difference in excess death between Sweden and the USA is a good estimate of the amount of harm caused by negligent handling of the pandemic — applying scientifically-wrong measures, persistently.
Notice how it shows that the “response to COVID” (equivalent to 760,578 US deaths) was over twice as deadly as the initial disease, itself (equivalent to 346,093 US deaths).
Reference
[Sweden population is older than US population] — CIA World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/sweden/ & https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-states/
[vaccine in Sweden is voluntary] — Public Health Agency of Sweden. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/27b48cad0a174c8a8d0dea66833f9451/till-dig-som-saknar-svensk-id-handling-om-vaccination-mot-covid-19-engelska.pdf
[Cumulative Excess Mortality during COVID-19 & P-scores using 5-year Average Baseline] — OurWorldInData [Human Mortality Database data]. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid